iFixit completes early teardown of iPhone 4

To obtain one of the first iPhone 4 smartphones for teardown, Kyle of the iFixit team flew to Japan with a tent, planning to camp out in front of the Ginza Apple Store. FedEx ended up delivering early shipments to some users two days in advance, making the trip unnecessary.

The teardown posted by iFixit of an early delivery reveals the new model's A4 application processor with 512MB of RAM, the new Retina Display, dual front and rear cameras, a secondary mic for noise canceling, an oversized new battery, and custom gyroscope which along with the accelerometer provides full six-axis motion control.

The two rear exposed Phillips screws now release the back panel rather than the front glass, a design that "makes replacing the rear panel trivial, but unfortunately means that replacing the front glass will likely be rather challenging," iFixit says.

Inside the back panel, the larger new 3.7V 1420 mAh Li-Polymer battery consumes all available space, while the new 5 megapixel still camera (capable of 720p, 30 fps video capture) anchors one corner and the vibration motor holds down the other.

The logic board packs Apple's A4 application processor, a "new 3-axis gyroscope that we believe is designed and manufactured by STMicro" and not yet commercially available, STMicro's 33DH 3-axis accelerometer, and an Apple-branded Cirrus Logic 338S0589 audio codec that is also used in iPad.

Digging deeper into the stainless steel body, iFixit pulled the top mic used for noise cancelation to quiet ambient sounds, the front facing VGA camera used for FaceTime video chat, and the primary mic used in the mouthpiece.